An intensely-satisfying study about a teenage girl in "trouble"
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Grade: A-
Director: Eliza Hittman (Beach Rats)
Screenplay: Hittman
Cast: Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder
Run Time: 1h 41m
Rating: PG-13
By John DeSando
Never Rarely Sometimes Always is an awkward title for an awkward situation: Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) must travel from rural Pennsylvania to NYC for an abortion. She’s a 17-yeqr-old solitary soul whose cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) is about the only person besides social workers with whom she communicates.
This taciturn protagonist makes anyone question whether the drama can be appealing to a wide audience since the odyssey to NYC is pretty tame, a melodrama at best, notwithstanding the procedure and college student Jasper (Theodore Pellerin), whom Skylar meets in the subway. Hovering around this intense film is a director, Eliza Hittman, who has a Seinfeldian gift for making the ordinary engrossing and employing a naturalism that mixes easily with dreams.
There is much to learn about teen age girls, especially in extreme circumstances, and Hittman delivers their emerging consciousness of the consequences for their actions and the necessity for invention when no one is there to help. When, for instance, they don’t have the returning fare, they hit up Jasper, who complies and gets a little bit of nooky reward from Skylar. Always men are intruding.
Mostly Never succeeds in immersing the audience in a very small teen world of survival with little excitement that many films about coming-of-age include as a matter of tradition. Even NYC seems benign with a lack of claustrophobia and urgency. Yet, Never draws you in because abortion is a prominent cultural topic that newly configured Supreme Court may affect soon.
Also, it introduces us to the inside of teen culture, to what’s happening there rather than in our remote adult world.
Skylar: Don't you ever just wish you were a dude?
Autumn: All the time.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com
